Early history of UNIX and shells

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <2838 at emerald.indetech.uucp> david at indetech.UUCP () writes:
>the "Mashey" shell.  Or did it?  The general question of when was a shell
>first written and used on a UNIX box came up.

As I recall hearing it, Ken Thompson wrote the first shell, which was
pretty basic and as with other UNIX software evolved slightly through
time.  Mashey's shell was widely used on PWB/UNIX.  Bourne's shell
displaced all of these, but Bill Joy's Cshell was concurrently written
and spread its influence in the Berkeley community.  In modern times
there have been revisions or rewrites of the Bourne shell that equal
or exceed Cshell's functionality; the Korn shell is the best known.